DFW Led Country in Home Construction in 2022
DFW: North Texas led the country in residential building permits in 2022. Using U.S. Census Bureau data, real estate company Point2 reports that North Texas topped other metro areas in single and multifamily construction. Point2 is part of Yardi Systems, a property management software company. When all 384 of the country’s metro areas were analyzed, DFW had 77,281 permits with Houston coming in second place at 75,786. Austin was sixth with 42,942. With Dallas, Houston and Austin in the country’s Top 10, Texas overall led the country with 263,529 permits, ahead of Florida’s 212,206 and California’s 118,090. Meanwhile, while single-family construction starts have lagged at the beginning of the year, builders are reporting fewer cancellation orders along with higher traffic and increased sales as the traditional spring real estate market commences. That included reports from homebuilder giant D.R. Horton of Arlington, which said that it saw a spike in sales in its latest quarter that ended in March, bringing it close to the level it saw at this point last year. Along with buyers taking advantage of a lower mortgage interest rate at the start of the year, the company also offered incentives and adjusted pricing. Real estate agents continue to report that demand and competition for pre-existing homes remain at high levels in sought-after neighborhoods throughout the Metroplex.
DFW: Wells Fargo is banking on Irving. The banking giant has started construction on an 850,000-square-foot office complex in Las Colinas near Northwest Highway. The $455 million facility will include two 10-story high-rises—each with more than 400,000 square feet of space—and a parking garage on a 22-acre lakeside development off Northwest Highway. When completed, the company will bring together about 3,000 of its nearly 7,000 area workers already spread out across 800,000 square feet of space in about 14 various DFW offices. The high-rise campus is being built along Lake Carolyn near the Irving Convention Center and Toyota Music Factory. It will have multi-use trails along the lake and numerous amenities within the high-rises, including a lake-view food and dining hall, a coffee shop, plus fitness and exercise facilities. The project is expected to be completed sometime in 2025. The Wells Fargo project is part of the current 6 million square feet of office construction in DFW, one of the country’s leading office development markets.
DFW: Another office mid-rise is going up in a Lewisville development. Bright Realty has started a four-story, nearly 150,000-square-foot office in the Castle Hills development off State Highway 121. This is the second office in the company’s Crown Centre complex. The first project—a four-story, 109,000-square-foot building—opened three years ago and is nearly fully leased. The Crown Centre project is a $1 billion mixed-use development on 140 acres. When completed, it will have 3 million square feet of office space, more than 400 hotel rooms and upwards of 2,000 apartments. Crown Centre is part of the 5,000-acre Castle Hills development that has been in the works for 20 years off the Sam Rayburn Tollway. It already boasts more than 4,000 single-family homes and several multi-family complexes with several thousand units.
DFW: It’s not just warehouse and distribution space that’s hot in southern Dallas County. Count technology in the mix. Bandera Ventures of Dallas has just purchased a 100-acre site in Lancaster to build a data center. The project will include multiple buildings and will be located east of Interstate 35 at South Dallas Avenue and Old Red Oak Road. The development is a joint venture, the third of its kind, between Bandera Ventures and Skybox Datacenter. North Texas is a leader in data center development. Cushman & Wakefield report that more than 2 million square feet of such projects were in development in North Texas at the end of last year. Several of those large data centers are in southern Dallas County, including one from Compass Datacenters. Google also has a large data center in Ellis County.
LA LA LAND: Brad Pitt is making moves again. In real estate. The actor may be as prolific in the real estate market as he is in his on-screen roles. He is said to have sold a two-acre estate in a sought-after neighborhood in LA for $33 million. And he just bought a small, but sleek and trendy mid-century modern for $5.5 million. It’s a 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom, three- bath, steel and glass home appropriately named the “Steel House.” It is on a hill in the same Los Feliz neighborhood where his former multimillion-dollar compound sits. It has terrazzo floors and sliding doors, plus a pool and sauna and patio surrounded by luscious landscaping. Like his varied starring roles, Pitt is no stranger to the real estate market—in California or elsewhere. He has bought and sold homes in Malibu and Beverly Hills and owns a $40 million coastal mansion in Carmel. Plus, he still controls Château Miraval, a winery in France that he once owned with his former wife, Angelina Jolie.